


Finally/Beautiful Stranger

by narcissablaxk



Series: Now or Never [2]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Drinking Games, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff With Very Little Plot, M/M, Season Two Canon Divergence, Two Truths and A Lie, drinking buddies, lawrusso, not quite porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24428896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Oh, we're dancing in my living room, and up come my fists. And I say, "I'm only playing," but the truth is this: that I've never seen a mouth that I would kill to kiss, and I'm terrified, but I can't resist.Daniel and Johnny play a drinking game in his apartment after a long day of hating each other.Part of the Now or Never series. All entries in the series are standalone.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Series: Now or Never [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772686
Comments: 10
Kudos: 274





	Finally/Beautiful Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> If you're familiar with the song, you might notice that this fic is named after a Halsey song. That song definitely gave me a jumping off point for this little thing, because I think the mention of fists just reminds me of LawRusso. I'm a Halsey fangirl, I guess, but I am also a LawRusso fangirl.

It had been a long fucking day. Johnny Lawrence usually liked to end long days in his apartment, drinking a Coors, away from everyone. But, unfortunately for both him and the public, he was out of Coors and grocery stores had stopped selling beer half an hour ago. So he found himself choosing, at random, a bar near his apartment, something divey but not staph infection divey, and parked his car outside, fully expecting to call a cab by the time the night was over. 

It took him less than five seconds to spot Daniel LaRusso sitting at the bar, his fingers absently curled around the stem of a martini glass. Why the fuck couldn’t Johnny escape this dude today? It was irritating. 

First he’d come stomping into Johnny’s dojo, his shoes all over the mat, demanding to know why Johnny had vandalized his dojo, and stolen his old mentor’s Medal of Honor of all things. As if Johnny had the time to do something so pathetically high school. 

Then he’d declared that Cobra Kai was diseased, that the students would be better to go somewhere else, or to quit karate altogether. Johnny could still feel Kreese’s eyes on him, watching carefully to see if he was going to do what Kreese would do, which was, apparently, the only right thing to do in his eyes. 

But he’d let down his old sensei again, and had shooed LaRusso out of his dojo, about half a dozen of his students going with him. It had ached painfully, watching the students go, knowing they believed what LaRusso had said, but the fact was, someone in Cobra Kai had done it. So was he wrong, really? 

He had forced the students to do burpees for the better part of an hour, pushups after that, until Stingray was barfing and even Miguel looked like he was exhausted. 

The phone call had pulled him from the exercise room, had taken his focus away from the goal, but he couldn’t put it off. He thought of Bobby’s voice on the phone again, delicate in a way that had somehow survived Kreese’s teachings, tender and confident where Johnny was unsure. He would leave to see Tommy tomorrow, but what he would find when he got there still weighed heavily on him. 

He took the seat beside LaRusso, not speaking or drawing his attention, and motioned for the bartender. “Coors,” he said. 

Daniel recognized his voice immediately. “Shit,” he muttered, 

“Don’t worry, LaRusso, I’m not here to start shit with you,” Johnny said, offering the bartender a nod when the Coors came to a stop in front of him. He took a long pull of it, his eyes trying to catch a glimpse of Daniel’s face without being obvious about it. 

He needed to know if he was about to get his ass kicked, he rationalized. 

“That’s a first,” Daniel muttered, bring his almost empty martini to his mouth and tipping the rest into it. Johnny watched him fish out the olive on the toothpick and put it in his mouth, slowly and carefully. 

Johnny swallowed and looked away. “You’re the one who came to my dojo and tried to start shit with _me_ –”

“Because _your_ kids defaced my dojo!” 

“I had nothing to do with that, alright, and I’m trying to find out who did,” Johnny wondered how many martinis deep he was, but Daniel’s eyes were still clear, his hands still steady on the bar. 

“Whatever, Johnny,” he muttered, motioning to the bartender to get him another. 

Johnny rolled his eyes. “I know you don’t believe me, that’s fine. I don’t give a shit what you think about me.” _Lie._ “But I don’t condone defacing dojos.” 

“You spray-painted a _dick_ on my face.” 

Johnny tried, valiantly, to hold back a snort. Daniel glared over at him, his jaw tight. He held up his hand. “Stop being a dick, then,” he said. 

“Johnny –”

“Alright, alright, I’ll say that I’m sorry for putting the dick on your face if you say you’re sorry for raising my rent,” Johnny said, taking another long drink of his beer. “Or did you think you were slick?” 

“I’m sorry,” Daniel grumbled, like saying it was causing him great pain, and took a sip of his new martini to wash out the apology. 

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Johnny teased, trying to wipe the smile off his face when Daniel glared at him again. “I’m sorry I spray-painted a dick on your face.” 

***

Daniel had definitely had one too many martinis. He knew he’d had one too many because Johnny wasn’t as annoying as he usually was. But after the day he’d had, didn’t he deserve to get drunk? 

“Are you alright, LaRusso?” Johnny asked, turning more completely toward him, his knee bumping Daniel’s leg on its journey over. 

“My dojo was vandalized, what do you think?” Daniel snapped, and Johnny leaned his elbow on the bar, his Coors momentarily forgotten. 

“Okay,” Johnny acknowledged. “What else?” 

“What do you mean, what else?” Daniel asked. “Isn’t that enough?” 

Johnny nodded knowingly. “Yeah, it is. But that’s not all that’s on your mind.” 

“You don’t know that –”

“If it was just the dojo, you would have beat my ass the moment I walked in. You’d be angry, because you’re a jumped-up little Jersey punk, but you’re slumped over at the bar, downing martinis,” Johnny said. He sounded smart for a moment, to Daniel’s ears – perceptive, understanding. 

“Leave me alone, Johnny,” he muttered instead of what he really wanted to say. _Amanda left me,_ his brain was saying. _She’s tired of everything karate has brought out in me, she doesn’t want to watch me revert back to my high school self, and it isn’t, but it definitely feels like your fault._

But was it Johnny’s fault that he’d been sucked in by the appeal of karate, of teaching karate? He didn’t think so. Johnny hadn’t done anything initially but try to get his car towed to another dealership. But it had been the mere sight of him, in his ragged flannel shirt and Kurt Russell-like ruggedness that had stuck with Daniel long afterward, lingering in the wings of his thoughts to come swooping in at the most inopportune times. 

“Fine,” Johnny said, shifting back to his previous position on the barstool. 

He had hoped Johnny would push him more, would refuse to leave him alone, even if it only meant more antagonizing. It took his mind off of other things. But Daniel was a proud man ( _not a jumped-up little Jersey punk,_ he thought defiantly), and if Johnny had honored his wishes, he wasn’t about to show his vulnerability by taking it back. 

But Johnny seemed like he was going to honor his wishes, his eyes trained studiously forward while Daniel tried to study his profile without getting caught. He could see a hint of stubble on his jaw, almost invisible in its blondness, the muscles of his jaw constantly working like he was always grinding his teeth. 

He took another long sip of his martini. 

“You really didn’t know about…my dojo?” he asked finally, desperate for something to say so the silence would end. 

Not that the bar was silent – in fact, it was loud enough that Daniel had to lean into Johnny’s space to be heard. But it seemed like, when they weren’t speaking, like a hush had fallen over the entire room. 

But that was stupid. 

“I really didn’t know,” Johnny allowed, giving him a half-smirk as he pulled the beer bottle up to his mouth again. “I would never disrespect another man’s dojo.” 

Daniel nodded, satisfied. 

“I would definitely disrespect you to your face, though,” Johnny said, his smile growing as Daniel turned back to him, mouth halfway open. “It’s more fun that way.” 

“Dick.” 

“Come on, LaRusso, like you don’t do the same thing,” Johnny pointed out as Daniel polished off another martini. He fished the olive out of the bottom of his glass, catching it between his teeth and slowly pulling the toothpick out. He could feel Johnny’s eyes on him, dark and thrilling. 

_Stay focused, Daniel._

“I retaliate,” Daniel said after a long, painful pause. “You initiate.” 

Johnny shrugged. “I’m an initiating kind of guy.” 

“That’s not what that word means,” Daniel chuckled, motioning for another martini. 

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Johnny asked as the bartender slid up, his eyes on Daniel. 

“Nope,” Daniel muttered. 

“You’re laughing at my jokes, LaRusso,” Johnny pointed out. “I think that means you’ve had enough.” 

“Why do you care, Johnny?” Daniel asked, turning so suddenly toward him that he almost slipped off the barstool. “Who gives a shit if I get drunk?” 

Johnny opened his mouth to speak, and for a moment, Daniel thought he was going to say that he cared, but he seemed to think better of it, and snapped his jaw shut. He shrugged, giving up the battle, but the moment the bartender moved away, he grabbed Daniel by the arm and yanked him off the barstool, watching with satisfaction when he stumbled. 

“What the fuck?” Daniel asked. “Get your hands off me.” 

“Come on, moron,” Johnny said, unbothered by Daniel’s protestations, or perhaps they weren’t as threatening as he thought they were. “If you’re going to get drunk, you’re not going to do it here.” 

He took Daniel’s arm again, his tight grip loosening when Daniel followed obediently behind him, looking back in surprise. Daniel wasn’t sure what he had to feel surprised about – where else was he going to go? He could go back to the bar, but he knew he wouldn’t. 

Johnny shoved him into the passenger seat of his Challenger, shutting the door after him. A moment later, he appeared in the driver’s seat, looking at him with expectant raised eyebrows. 

“Seatbelt, LaRusso,” he ordered. 

“Where are we going?” Daniel asked, his voice just slightly muddled to his own ears. 

“I can take you home, if you want,” Johnny said agreeably. “Before you make an ass of yourself.” 

“You’d be the expert in that, wouldn’t you?” Daniel shot back. Johnny just huffed a laugh and didn’t answer. “I don’t want to go home.” 

“Okay,” Johnny said patiently. He didn’t ask Daniel for a follow up location. He just turned up the CD in the car (he’d been forced to upgrade from tapes to CDs when he’d gotten the Challenger), and Daniel was pulled along in the current, drowning in Ratt, wondering where Johnny was taking him after all. 

***

Johnny wasn’t sure what had come over him. There was no reason why he shouldn’t leave LaRusso in the bar, prepared to drink himself stupid into the early hours. What did it matter to him what he did, anyway? But there was something sad around his eyes that he didn’t like, and a woman in the back corner of the bar that had been eyeballing him in a way that Johnny would call predatory. 

So now he had LaRusso in his car, bobbing his head along absently to the music, the line of his jaw tense where the rest of him looked relaxed. 

Johnny did the only thing he could think of – he took LaRusso home. 

Not to Daniel’s home, since the man had been pretty adamant about not going there (Johnny filed that information away for later), but to _his_ home. He felt the familiar nerves wash over him when he considered what Daniel would think of his apartment. It was definitely not up to the standards of Daniel’s own million dollar home. 

But Daniel didn’t protest, didn’t make any snarky comments. He just got out of the car and followed Johnny to his door, humming one of the Ratt songs under his breath. 

“Didn’t know you were familiar with Ratt,” Johnny observed. 

Daniel smirked. “The things you don’t know about me could fill many books, Johnny Lawrence.” 

“Alright, LaRusso,” Johnny acquiesced, unlocking his door and swinging it open. Daniel stepped inside, his head turning this way and that, and the knot in Johnny’s stomach tightened. Surely he was observing and judging. 

He was waiting, with bated breath, for Daniel to speak. There were two possibilities – he could lie about Johnny’s place being “nice,” and they would both know he was lying, but the comment would slide on, uncontested; or he could make a snide comment, and Johnny could start antagonizing him anew. 

He wasn’t sure which one he hoped Daniel would do. 

“Got any beer?” Daniel asked instead, leaning heavily against the wall, his cheekbones casting a shadow over the rest of his face in the dim light. 

Johnny grinned at him, not even sure why he was grinning, and nodded. “Of course, LaRusso.” 

***

“Know any drinking games?” LaRusso asked, looking up from where he had been studiously inspecting his bottle of beer. 

“Drinking games?” Johnny asked incredulously. “We aren’t teenage girls, LaRusso, just drink if you want to get drunk.” 

Daniel shrugged. “You’re no fun.” 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t aware he was allowed to be fun. He grabbed his beer and sat on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table he wasn’t quite used to yet (he’d bought it when he went into Home Depot and he’d spotted Daniel and Robby, if only so they wouldn’t see each other again at the register). 

“LaRusso, I am the most fun dude you know in your age bracket,” he said. “You just don’t know what fun is.” 

“I know what fun is!” Daniel protested. “I just don’t think getting blackout drunk and jumping off a roof is that fun.” 

“Hey, that was _one_ time, and I landed in a pool, so it was safe.” 

“The shallow end of the pool, Johnny, you’re lucky you aren’t dead,” Daniel’s face was all righteous indignation, but his mouth was pulling in the way Johnny was familiar with – like he was trying not to smile. 

Johnny intended to have a smartass comment to make, but Daniel’s face was illuminated by the little lamp in the corner, casting shadows of his eyelashes, his lips still wet from the beer, and he found that he couldn’t speak. 

“I know a game we can play,” Daniel said after the silence stretched thin. Johnny swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Sam taught it to me.” 

“So we’re gonna play a teenage girl’s game,” Johnny clarified. 

“It’s called two truths and a lie,” he said, pretending like he hadn’t heard him. 

“Oh, I know this game, Miguel loves it,” Johnny said, leaning back on his hands on the floor, content to watch Daniel from here, no matter what the game was. There was something about him when he was a little drunk. His Jersey posturing all fell away, leaving all of the things that Johnny enjoyed – his widely wandering hands, his slight accent that made him sound a bit like a stranger, the warmth of his eyes. 

“You go first,” Daniel said, leaning forward so his elbows were resting on his knees, surveying Johnny closely. 

“Oh fuck you,” he said with no malice. “Okay uh, I went to college, I was born in Nevada, and I was in the Air Force.” 

Daniel stared at him, his eyes slightly narrowed. For a moment, Johnny thought he hadn’t heard him. Then he clicked his tongue, pulling his lower lip into his mouth and biting it while he thought. 

He had to look away. 

“You didn’t go to college,” Daniel said finally. “That’s the lie.” 

“Drink, LaRusso,” Johnny said smugly. 

“What?” 

“You heard me, hot shot, drink,” Johnny said, tilting the bottle upward toward Daniel’s mouth. Daniel allowed it, his eyes still on Johnny like he was trying to read him. “I went to a community college for a year before I dropped out.” 

“Why didn’t I know this?” Daniel asked, taking his penalty drink, his eyes suddenly and surprisingly clear. 

“Why would you?” Johnny asked. “You went to wherever you went for college, and I just…stayed here.” He paused, taking in Daniel’s face again. “Your turn.” 

“Fine. I dated Amanda’s sister before I dated her, I was born in New York, not Jersey, and I hate martinis.” 

“Come on, LaRusso, give me a challenge,” Johnny bragged. “You were totally born in Jersey.” 

“Drink up, Johnny,” Daniel replied with a smirk. “I hate martinis.” 

“But you _drink_ them!”

“Yep,” Daniel nodded. “Because if you make them really cold, you can’t taste them.” 

Johnny shook his head, taking a long drink from his beer. 

Things continued much in that way for a long time, both of them proving unequivocally that they didn’t really know the other. At least, they didn’t know the details of their lives. Johnny didn’t really feel like they didn’t know each other, in spite of the evidence. They knew each other in a fundamental way, differently than the way people knew each other just by knowing events. 

They knew each other as souls, not people. It was impossible not to, after so many years of fighting. Karate connected you in a way that conversations just didn’t. He was sure of it. 

“My turn,” Johnny said, sitting up a little straighter. 

“Maybe I’ll finally get it right,” Daniel said sheepishly. 

_Doubt it,_ Johnny thought. “Okay, Ali dumped me because I forgot her birthday, Dutch gave me a concussion in '84, during a sparring session, and…” here he hesitated, trying to decide if he had enough courage to say it. “I didn’t hate you. Don’t hate you, whatever.” 

Daniel chuckled, deep in his throat, and said “That last one is a lie.” 

Johnny didn’t smile this time, but captured Daniel’s gaze and held it. “Drink, LaRusso.” 

Daniel blinked several times, as if trying to make something compute that simply wouldn’t. Johnny watched him for a few moments, content to let him process. It would take him some time to wrap his mind around that concept too. 

“Dutch never gave me a concussion,” he said when Daniel didn’t say anything. 

“You _hated_ me,” Daniel finally said, staring at nothing in particular. “You told me so.” 

Johnny shrugged. “I lied.” 

“You pushed me off a cliff!” 

“It was a hill, you big crybaby,” Johnny scoffed, leaning forward to put his bottle of beer, now mostly empty, on the coffee table. “Besides, have you never heard of a guy pulling a girl’s pigtails on the playground?” 

“Am I supposed to be the girl in this scenario?” Daniel asked, sounding no longer startled but a little amused. 

Johnny shrugged. 

“Oh my god, you’re a fucking _idiot,_ ” Daniel muttered, taking a long drink of his beer. 

Johnny figured this was when the night would end. Surely Daniel would want to leave now, after Johnny essentially admitted that he’d had a crush on him in high school. He hadn’t said it out loud, but based on Daniel’s pointed question, his own reference to pulling pigtails, he knew LaRusso was smart enough to have figured it out. 

“I was _obsessed_ with you in high school,” Daniel’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away, intruding into Johnny’s thoughts. 

He went still, his eyes searching the coffee table, too nervous to meet Daniel’s gaze. “You’re supposed to say two truths now,” he said with a laugh, offering Daniel an out. It was only polite, he rationalized, but he could feel the sharp pain in his chest that came with thinking about Daniel laughing off a comment like that, turning it into a joke. 

“It’s not a lie,” he said firmly. 

Johnny felt like he was standing with his toes over a line. He wasn’t sure what the line represented, or why he was barely standing on the other side, but Daniel’s voice was starting to tempt him into stepping over. Still, something told him that stepping over the line was a lot more complicated than staying where he was. 

Daniel was watching him carefully, his jaw sharp and defiant, his eyes soft and warm, the lines around them evidence of years of laughter, happiness, life. He could almost be the boy he’d met on the beach all those years ago, staring down at Johnny now instead of up, the same dangerous glint in his eye that was both nerve-wracking and thrilling. 

“Amanda asked me to move out,” he said when he gathered that Johnny wouldn’t be speaking. “She wants to get divorced.” 

And then the line was gone. 

“That’s why you wanted to get drunk,” Johnny was aware that he was sitting up straight now, reading the whole night differently. 

Daniel shrugged. 

Johnny pulled himself to his feet, noting the way that Daniel rose to meet him, as if he expected him to get up, expected what was supposed to come next. Johnny stared at him for a minute, the light of the lamp too low to completely illuminate his features, and turned and went back into the kitchen. 

He wasn’t sure what he was doing now; his blood was rushing in his ears, anticipation of something that Johnny hadn’t decided to do yet. 

Daniel followed him in. 

“Maybe I should call a cab,” he said, and Johnny could see the opportunities here, the chance to tell Daniel yes, he should go, that he should try to make things right with Amanda, that all of their confessing in the dark had been just a joke, a drinking game that was meant to be fun. 

Instead, he stepped into Daniel’s space, backing him up until he was up against the wall, near the fridge, Daniel was looking up at him, daring at him to do what he hadn’t contemplated until now. 

Johnny was powerless to resist a dare. 

“Do you want to call a cab?” he asked, one hand coming up to rest on the wall behind Daniel’s head. 

Daniel leaned his head back onto the wall, his eyes dropping from Johnny’s to his mouth. “No,” he said. 

Later, Johnny would claim that he had leaned in first, and he would attribute it to the Cobra Kai adage of “strike first.” That would, in fact, be untrue. It was Daniel who grabbed Johnny by the front of his shirt and pulled him in, his mouth warm and inviting and smooth. Johnny let him slip a hand up behind his neck to his hair, where he gently dug his nails in, pulling Johnny even closer. 

Johnny had been obsessed with Daniel’s mouth since high school. The little shit had a snarky mouth on him, but his lips were full, soft, almost feminine. Johnny hadn’t wanted to notice them, but once he had, when Jimmy had made some comment about Daniel kissing Ali, he hadn’t been able to forget them. 

Everything he ever imagined about them was true. 

Daniel dug his nails deeper into Johnny’s skull, pulling at his hair, and Johnny groaned, just enough that Daniel could slip his tongue into his mouth, hot and wet and full of delicious friction that he couldn’t get enough of. 

Johnny was so caught up in Daniel’s mouth, in the way his teeth would just barely nip at his bottom lip, the way his tongue seemed content to taste him forever, that he had forgotten everything else. And then Daniel’s other hand took a fistful of his shirt, and pulled their hips flush with each other. 

Daniel pulled away with a gasp, his chest heaving. He looked up at Johnny, his eyes surprisingly innocent considering the sinful things he had just been doing with his mouth. But it wasn’t just innocence to Johnny – it was fear. 

He wasn’t sure how to assuage the fear he saw there, because he felt it too. Surely what they were doing was going to change everything after tonight, wouldn’t it? He pulled his hand off of Daniel’s hip (when had it gotten there?) and gently traced the line of his jaw. 

He wasn’t sure what to say – everything he said would come out wrong, especially when he could still taste Daniel in his mouth, beer and olives and desire, so he kissed him again, this time slow, soft, completely unlike himself. 

Daniel let it happen, a moan tearing itself free from his throat. What the did fear matter, anyway, when he could make Daniel make noises like that? Johnny pulled back, tilting Daniel’s head up with his jaw, fastening his lips to Daniel’s neck, his fingers finally coming alive to start unbuttoning his shirt. 

_“John,”_ the sound was a whisper, a prayer, in Johnny’s ear, and he rolled his hips down into Daniel’s again, relishing in the way his breath hitched, the way his hands tightened in Johnny’s shirt. 

“Don’t call a cab,” Johnny finally said, his lips moving against the skin of Daniel’s throat. 

Daniel sighed, exhaling a laugh. “I never was,” he admitted. “I was bluffing.” 

Johnny smiled, and he knew Daniel could feel his teeth against his neck. “Good,” he said, “because you have more truths to tell me.” 

“I don’t want to drink anymore, Johnny,” Daniel protested. 

Johnny pulled back far enough to smirk at him. “The penalty isn’t drinking anymore,” he said wickedly, giving Daniel another searing kiss. 

“Then what is?” Daniel asked, but the question was breathless, the anticipation already tempting. 

“I’m sure we can think of some punishments,” Johnny shrugged, working the last few buttons on Daniel’s shirt open, his hands anxious to feel more skin. “Or rewards, if you prefer.” 

Daniel nodded his approval, and Johnny grinned, taking his hand to pull him into his bedroom. He was too old to do this kind of shit on the couch.


End file.
